(Persia Digest) – Upon entering the Assyrian resting place in Tabriz, a foreign name engraved on a tombstone is a reminder of its owner’s brave fight during Iran’s Constitutional Revolution of over a century ago.

This is the name of a man who came to Tabriz from his native America to teach history, but was able to make history and record his name as a martyr of the Constitutional Revolution.

Howard Conklin Baskerville (1885-1909) was given permission to stay in Iran for only two years. But his love of mankind and liberty kept him on Iranian soil and in their hearts, immortalizing this young, freedom fighter with a statue in the Tabriz House of Constitution.

Howard Baskerville portrait at the Constitution Museum in Tabriz, painted in 1956

When there is talk of the Tabriz siege and the constitutionalists during the short, tyrannical rule of Mohammad-Ali Shah, Baskerville’s good name is always mentioned – a man who sacrificed his life to break the siege.

Baskerville was an exceptional man who became involved in the internal politics of another country to show freedom and humanity to the world. He came to the rescue of great constitutionalists like Sattar Khan, to break the Shah’s siege of Tabriz which was starving its population and show that differences in nationality and faith can cross boundaries so people can live together in peace and change the world.

Baskerville captured the hearts and minds of the Iranian nation, so much so that he was given such a grand burial by the commanders, freedom fighters, and people of Tabriz after his martyrdom that many of the foreign envoys attending the funeral described it as unprecedented.